Startled
by thewrinkleintime
Summary: He'd been so careful to construct an unnoticeable facade, a protective layer under which his skin lay raw and red. But now there was no pretending; everyone knew, could easily see, that something was wrong.
1. Chapter 1

_"What a smart boy you have!" One of Brian Banner's colleagues gushed. His father was hosting a dinner party for some of his work friends, and Bruce had been the object of much praise throughout the night. His mother looked on with a smile, clearly enjoying herself and the positive attention bestowed on her son. One look from his father was all it took though, and the smile fell right off her face, replaced with a mask of normalcy, under which Bruce could see the fear and worry._

_"Yes, I have quite a son." His father's hand dug painfully into his shoulder, and Bruce knew the true meaning of his father's words. His teachers called him a child prodigy, but Bruce knew the truth. His father was right, he was a freak, a mutant who didn't deserve kindness or praise._

* * *

Bruce is in his lab, working diligently and oblivious to the outside world when Tony approaches him and taps him on the shoulder. Bruce flinches violently, not having noticed Tony's presence.

"Sorry," Bruce apologizes, looking at the floor. His face is slightly flushed and he's twisting his hands in a nervous manner.

"Hey, you didn't do anything wrong." Tony seems concerned, but Bruce manages to suitably redirect the conversation.

* * *

_His sides throbbed in a painful reminder of his father's rage. He wasn't sure what had caused his father to lash out this time. It could have been anything-Bruce didn't finish his chores perfectly, or he said something that angered his father, or, more likely, it was simply pure, uncontained hatred. Bruce was used to the pain though, and knew how to effectively hide it. His teachers had no idea what went on behind closed doors and Bruce wanted to keep it that way._

* * *

It's a Thursday night, and the Avengers are all at Stark Tower. Bruce is reading a physics journal, engrossed in the description of dark matter. He doesn't notice Tony coming up behind him.

"We're about to start a movie," Tony says as he claps his hands down on Bruce's shoulders. Bruce flinches, and then curls in on himself slightly, as if protecting his body from some adversary. A few seconds pass and he realizes it's just Tony.

"Sorry." Bruce sighs and runs a hand over his face.

"Stop apologizing." Tony takes a step back, trying to give Bruce some space. "Come on, there's popcorn."

* * *

_Bruce looked on in horror as his father pushed his mom against the wall, hands wrapped tight around her neck. He rushed forward, grabbing onto one of his father's arms, trying to wrench him away. It was no use though, Bruce was just a child, nowhere near as strong as his father._

_Eventually his father let go. Bruce watched as his mom collapsed onto the floor. It was his fault. His mom had been trying to stop his father from hurting him, but Brian only changed the target of his rage, and instead went after Rebecca. _

_His mom wore scarves for the next two weeks to cover the finger-shaped bruises. She couldn't hide the hoarseness of her voice though, and for the most part stayed shut in her room, unable to face the world and its questioning glances._

* * *

Bruce can barely hear himself think. Thor is yelling-roaring, really-and Tony is trying to calm him down.

"You do not understand!" Thor takes a step towards Bruce, and all of the sudden Bruce can't breathe. Thor is in his space, is still yelling, but Bruce can't hear him. Thor raises a hand and Bruce acts without thinking, pushing himself back against the wall and bringing an arm up to shield his face. He's 10 years old, helpless and terrified. He screws his eyes shut in anticipation of the blows to come. Nothing happens.

The yelling has stopped. Bruce doesn't move.

"Hey, Bruce. It's okay." A voice manages to penetrate the fear, and Bruce counts to ten before slowly lowering his arm and looking around. The room is empty now, save for him and Tony. He's in Stark Tower, and his father is not here. He repeats this to himself several times until his breathing starts to even out.

"I told them all to leave, it's just you and me, they won't come back in." Bruce nods his understanding. He rubs a hand over his face and realizes his mask has effectively fallen. He'd been so careful to construct an unnoticeable facade, a protective layer under which his skin lay raw and red. But now there was no pretending; everyone knew, could easily see, that something was wrong.

All of the sudden it's too much. He slides down the wall into a heap on the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

Tony watches as Bruce crumples to the floor, hesitating only a second before sitting opposite him, making sure to leave a fair amount of space. His mind flits through various explanations, and he remembers other incidents where Bruce had a similar, albeit not as severe, reaction to sound or touch. Tony thinks about what he knows: Bruce has a heightened acoustic startle response, and an increased fear-potentiated startle. His brain supplies him several explanations. The one that fits best leaves Tony's stomach in knots: past fear conditioning, likely related to childhood abuse, as shown through symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tony hopes he is wrong, hopes with all his being, but he also knows that Bruce has never talked about his childhood or his parents. Tony has several bits of information, but that's all they are, bits.

"Is there anything I can do?" Tony doesn't ask if Bruce is okay, because clearly he's not, and Tony isn't in the habit of supplying meaningless platitudes.

"I thought I had gotten over it, I thought I was fine." Tony isn't quite sure what Bruce is talking about, but he figures that the best course of action is to let Bruce lead this conversation, so he sits back and waits.

"There were a lot of...bad things...that happened when I was a kid." Tony senses this is an understatement, but he keeps his suspicions to himself. "They've left their mark, both literally and metaphorically." He hates to think that Bruce has scars from his past, has physical reminders of pain no child should be subjected to. "I guess I still have some stuff to work through." Bruce shrugs sort of sheepishly, and Tony slowly reaches forward to place one of his hands over Bruce's.

"Don't you dare try to apologize. Whatever happened, it wasn't your fault, and no one is going to think badly of you for being affected by it."

Bruce smiles. It's a small smile, tinged with a fair amount of sadness, but it's progress and Tony will take what he can get at this point.

"Come on, you're staying here tonight." He takes Bruce's hand in his and helps him to his feet. "There's a guest room you can use just down the hall."

* * *

A week later and Bruce is once again at Stark Tower. He and Tony are in Tony's lab, working on a pet project. Bits of paper, covered with complex equations, are strewn about, mixed in with various types of expensive tools that Bruce never dreamed he would have this sort of access to.

He's nervous, unsure of what he's about to do, but he feels a need to get it out, to tell someone. Bruce takes a deep breath and begins.

"It was my father." Bruce makes sure not to say 'dad', because his father might be one of his parents, but he sure as hell wasn't ever his dad.

"What about him?" Tony asks, frowning in confusion.

"He used to beat me. A lot." Bruce stares at the wall behind Tony's head because there's no way he's going to be able to do this if he looks at Tony. He feels Tony turn his attention to him, putting aside his tools. "It got worse after my mother died. She could sometimes stop him, but without her, he was..." Bruce trails off. He doesn't know how to explain this, how to convey the fear and pain he felt every day for years, how he walked on eggshells and did everything in his power not to set his father off. He usually failed; his father was unpredictable and cruel. He knew it wasn't his fault, logically he knew that. But even after all these years, Bruce still felt a niggling of doubt, that maybe if he'd just tried harder, been a better son, that everything would have been different.

"It was bad." Bruce unconsciously runs a finger over the long, white scar on his forearm. Tony notices and slowly reaches out, taking his arm gently and examining the mark. "Glass shard," Bruce explains. "He threw a bottle at me once." Bruce remembers that night, remembers the paralyzing fear as he watched his father descend into a fury unlike anything he'd seen before. He'd tried to protect his face, deflect the worst of the hits, but was left with several jagged scars on his forearms as a reminder of that night. Tony runs a callused hand over the scars before releasing his arm.

"I thought I had gotten over it, but the move to New York, Hulking out for the first time in so long, the battle, it must have triggered something and it's like it all came loose, and now...I don't know." He looks down at his hands. This is harder than he thought it would be.

"Hey, it's fine if you don't want to say anything else. I think you should talk about it, but it doesn't have to be right now, and it doesn't have to be with me." He looks at Tony for the first time since the conversation started, and is glad to see that whatever Tony is showing, it's not pity. He looks concerned, but Bruce can hardly blame him.

"Thank you," Bruce says, and he really means it. Tony is letting him go about this at his own pace, isn't forcing any answers out of him, isn't pressuring him at all.

"If you want, I can give you the info for a therapist I know. I saw her after the kidnapping stuff, she's really good with PTSD." Bruce nods and Tony asks Jarvis to print out the info.

They return to their project and start a lively debate over the awesomness of various theoretical physicists. Pepper comes in at some point to let them know they've worked through dinner, but neither of them really mind.

* * *

Tony is relieved when Bruce agrees to see a therapist. He just wants to cuddle Bruce until all the bad stuff is gone, but not only would that probably not be appreciated, Tony knows it also wouldn't work. Bruce's demons can't be scared away with hugs, as much as Tony wishes they could. He doesn't like feeling helpless, but he knows this is something in which he can only offer support; for all his money and intelligence he can't fix this.

Bruce goes to his first therapy appointment the following week. He makes an appointment for every Thursday of the foreseeable future, but finds himself talking to Tony more and more. It becomes a regular thing between Tony and Bruce. On certain nights they'll retire to the lab, a safe middle ground in which Bruce feels relaxed and unthreatened. They'll tinker with some project and eventually Bruce will start talking. He tells a different story each time. Sometimes it's the story of one of his scars, other times he recounts a happier memory, usually of his mother.

"What about this one? Tony brushes a finger over Bruce's eyebrow, where a small scar is hidden, only visible up close.

"I was twelve, and it was summertime..."

There's a cathartic sort of release in sharing something he had kept to himself for so long, and in a startling moment of revelation, Bruce realizes he's not alone in this. As a child he was isolated from his peers, his intelligence providing a barrier few could cross, and his father effectively preventing any sort of support system from developing. But Bruce is an adult now and his father can't control him anymore. Bruce thinks about the other Avengers, about Thor's stories of Asgard, of Pepper and Clint and Natasha, of Tony and his pancakes and intelligent banter. He smiles as he thinks of his friends, of the family he's created in the time he's spent in New York. He has a real family now, a family that he chose and who chose him back. No, Bruce is not alone, not anymore.


End file.
